"My name’s Adam Aslam. I was born and raised in Harehills, so was my mother; my grandparents came to Harehills in the late sixties. I’m a local council and NHS youth worker, and I’ve been community organising since I was 15. When people ask me what I do, I like to say I’m a storyteller and a connecter because that’s how I would describe my professional work and my personal engagements. I know what it’s like to be isolated, I know what it’s like to be an outsider. My biggest inspiration is my mum in terms of seeing her journey. I always think about how she was excluded, culturally and socially, and how can I support people who are like her. I think community empowerment is a very important part of who I am. No one deserves to be excluded.
Harehills is a place that’s a melting pot of cultures and traditions. It’s a place that always makes people feel welcome and included. You can walk along Harehills Road or Roundhay Road and you can find 20 different variations of traditional foods, you can hear 30 different languages being spoken at any time. I’ve grown up picking up a lot of the phrases, traditions and habits of different people. You just feel like you’re walking around the world. What people see as a negative, I see as a blessing. You feel like you’re a global citizen when you’re in a place like Harehills.
A number of people have come with absolutely nothing and Harehills has been a place that’s been the starting point for many people to develop and grow. We have new refugee communities coming in all the time. A lot of people are going through what my grandparents went through. It was the Lithuanians, the Jewish communities before them, the Irish, Caribbean communities, then the Pakistani and Kashmiri communities and now the Kurdish communities. It’s a story of resilience. People who come with nothing, people who go through hardships, people who club together, people who organise and then people who prosper. I think that, for me, is the story of many of the families in Harehills."
